


Growing Pains

by WhatATime



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Batfamily (DCU), Batfamily Dynamics (DCU), Brotherly Love, Chronic Pain, Empathy, Existential Angst, Existential Crisis, Gen, Good Sibling Jason Todd, Heavy Angst, Hurt Tim Drake, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pain, Tim Drake Angst, Tim Drake-centric, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-25 21:48:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30095637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatATime/pseuds/WhatATime
Summary: When a muscle is torn, you take a rest. You ice it. You don’t run as hard during the day and wrap it tight at night to keep things from shifting again. But when the mind is sore, it doesn’t know how to stop. It just keeps stretching and stretching until it gives out and leaves you drowning on the edge of Wayne Tower.
Relationships: Tim Drake & Jason Todd
Kudos: 27





	Growing Pains

You have to promise not to get mad. You have to promise not to get mad and to listen and to understand that history is not linear. That we will not always be in front of what we have gone through, that sometimes we’ll backslide, twine ourselves around sleepless nights while we try to make sense of the world and not feel so ravaged.

So, if you can promise me this, if you can promise not to get mad and to just watch what’s happening and understand that sometimes we just don’t know what to do, I can tell you the story. And if you’re not sure if you’re ready to accept this, leave and come back when you are.

This story is for the calm ones, the ones who know, the ones who hear. The ones whose story is not much different from this one in substance. And it’s okay if you’re not ready to hear and to see, but once you can touch this fully and watch them through tears, you’ll know what this means.

If you’re still here, that means you are ready. It means you’re sitting and watching Tim Drake sit on the precipice of a building after a long night of patrol. Gotham is in this fog, but the confusion on Tim’s brain is thicker, more poisonous to soul and spirit.

He feels this cramp in his middle, and lately, he doesn’t know if it’s a torn muscle or a sore mind. He doesn’t feel equipped or focused enough for either, but he knows that a muscle can heal better, can recover faster.

When a muscle is torn, you take a rest. You ice it. You don’t run as hard during the day and wrap it tight at night to keep things from shifting again. But when the mind is sore, it doesn’t know how to stop. It just keeps stretching and stretching until it gives out and leaves you drowning on the edge of Wayne Tower.

Sucking in a breath, Tim tells himself to get it together. He knows he’ll have to head home soon before someone comes looking for him, but he doesn’t want to go. What if they see that he’s empty? What will they do?

As he stands, Tim decides he has to fill himself on the way home. It’s the only way to secure his privacy. The Bats love to pry. It’s how they all have gotten so good at building up walls, at reinforcing them with locks and bolts, chalky cement always on their lips.

He climbs back down the building and hops onto his bike. Putting the helmet on is a hesitant motion, but the revving of the engine isn’t. So as he’s off, he plays music in his helmet, begins drafting talking points in his head.

By the time he’s home, he feels he has too much to say. If he mentions even half of these things, they’ll know something is wrong. In the end, he decides to mention none of them as he walks past Bruce’s empty chair and towards the cases.

Those lights are always what welcome him back to the Cave, remnants of darker days and different days and signs of what is to come, of what it means to be a Bat, a Robin, a crusader. No one would be able to convince Tim that the bat-suit is dark because of camouflage.

Plenty of heroes ride in vibrant colors, smile in their photos, get married. Such is not in Tim’s future. No, he’s long read the writing on the wall. His apple hasn’t even fallen from the tree.

Sometimes he wonders if he can change his mind, if he can look back and not damn what he has left of his life to the underworld. He’s not going to risk it, though. He’ll be damned if he looks back. He just knows it.

Forward is the only way to go, even if you’re just circling back.

“Timbo,” Jason evenly sounds from behind Tim. By how his voice echoes, Tim can tell Jason is a few yards away, that Jason’s arms are crossed, that the reddest of the Dark Knight’s children has deep purple bruises under his eyes from where time has teased him.

Swallowing, Tim turns around. “Hey.”

Jason comes up next to Tim, stares at the cases as well. Neither of them is for small talk. Those who think they know Tim Drake think he’s into small talk, but those closest to Tim know he craves silence and finds facile phrases bitter on his tongue.

Another sharp pain rips through Tim’s middle. He tenses as he gently presses one arm into his flesh. It’s as if the pain keeps shifting, a misshapen lump rolling and scraping against his insides as it tries to find a place to rest. He doesn’t know if the muscle is spasming under his finger or if it’s just his imagination.

“—im, did you hear me?” Jason asks, now looking at Tim.

“Sorry,” Tim says, pressing his palm deeper into his abdomen.

“Can I see?” Jason asks. He uncrosses his arms.

“No.” And Tim means it. It’s not one of those nos that’s actually a yes in disguise. It’s not some attempt to play hard to get or to be seen. He doesn’t want to be touched, and if Jason tries, Tim thinks he may start punching. It’s the only urge he has right now.

Jason respects it, though, doesn’t look the slightest bit hurt as he crosses her arms over his chest again. He watches Tim instead of the case now, though. “How long have you had yours? Mine started when I was… I don’t know… eight? Long before Bruce.”

“Mine, too. Can’t remember a time I didn’t.”

“Just makes me think there’s something more divine going on here, you know? Like it wasn’t just some coincidence but destiny. I hate thinking of it that way, though.”

“It’s true. There’s nothing epic to it.”

“I think that’s why I hate it. Nothing epic. Just sad.”

“Downright depressing.”

“When I first woke up, I didn’t have them anymore. Swear they didn’t come back until I did. Makes me think I’d be better off somewhere.”

“Better off face down in a Gotham river?”

“Not supposed to talk like that.”

“We all think it.” As the pain eats away at Tim more, he moves around, trying to find some way to ease the gnawing. He cadences his breathing and then lowers himself onto the ground, eventually flat on the cold floor. “Whose fault is it?”

“It’s never anyone’s fault, really. Just in our nature.”

“That feels like a cop out.”

“It’s all we have, Tim.” Jason pivots, walking away. 

Tim’s done with the conversation, too. He continues breathing slowly, in through the nose and out through the mouth. It takes fifteen minutes for the pain to start to go, Tim’s gentle massaging finally working. Once he has it down to a dull throb, he stands again and goes to shower.

It doesn’t take long for Tim to finish and be back upstairs. That’s when he sees that he’d only been down in the cave for a little under half an hour since he arrived back home. It had felt like longer, but that is probably just because he’s been lost in himself lately.

He sees Jason at the end of the hallway right before he enters his bedroom. 

They say nothing.

Yes, it is an unresolved night,

but what did you expect?

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I've been writing. No, I haven't been posting. It's complicated as to why, but the simple answer is that most things aren't good enough. Hope you enjoy. :-)
> 
> I'm adding the smiling face so as to not seem so somber. In real life, I'm really not that sad of a person, but I sense that such is because I wring the worst of myself out onto the page so as to not scare people.


End file.
